Red Sky at Morning
by Freelance Muse
Summary: My friend FinalActs made a story called Operation: Seaworld. This takes place before that story, not too long after arrival in San Diego for the Gundam Boys. Preemployment at Seaworld. 3, 1x3.
1. Red Sky at Morning

Somehow the Gundam Pilots found themselves settled in San Diego. Trowa lived near the central business district, in a somewhat historical neighborhood. He took apartments above a stained glass shop. The glassmaker had used those rooms for storage but had taken all of his wares downstairs in his old age that they might be more readily accessible.

Trowa began to learn the trade from Henstridge. The old man was delighted, he found the quiet boy's manner pleasing, mistaking his trademark silence for quiet reverence. He also liked the stillness believing Trowa displayed more patience than he thought possible for a young man. He was impressed by the cool intelligent observation he received from steady green eyes. Trowa was a quick study at creating and then tracing the patterns with glass cutters, at placing the metal bracings between plates, at configuring colors of glass, and making a whole that was a harmony to behold.

The first commission that he did all his own upset the shopowner. Henstridge looked at the birds in flight made of opaque white glass over a sea of somehow churning greenish water. It did not please him that this thing had been created in just hours yet held such detail. Yet that was not what perturbed him, it was the red sky beset with a rising sun. He knew that it was strikingly lovely, but it struck too hard, too piquantly, it was painful! Besides all that, no one wanted a frontispiece for a sailing supply store that hinted at bad weather and uncalm seas! He banished Trowa from the shop that evening.

"And take that damned horrid window with you too, that'll be your pay. Rent is still due on the 1st, just leave the money in the mailbox and don't come in here again." He started muttering under his breath, "Some kind of freak of nature..."

Trowa just took the glass and quietly hefted it to his apartments. If the man had looked he would not have seen emotion on the boy's face, just the quiet resolve that demonstrated that he was accustomed to such verbal expressions aimed at him. That night he sat in his apartment and contemplated the window.

_ It is only a sunrise... it is not so terrible, is it? It must be, I just can't recognize terror. I should hide this so that Quatre never has to see it, if he cried... _The offending glass sat against the wall just under the window. He sat entirely still in a chair on the other side of the bed from the window contemplating it instead of wondering how he'd pay for the rent due in just under a week.


	2. Interruption, a cup of tea

That evening Trowa's contemplations were interrupted by a quiet knock. He opened the door to find Heero Yuy standing there alone. This surprised him, though he was uncertain at first about the undercurrent that made him feel surprised. The dim yet warm light softened Heero's appearance, and Trowa stood aside silently as a welcome gesture. The other walked in, with sure and even soldier's steps, and Trowa understood that those steps were tempered with something else... something that made Heero seem like a caged tiger, something testy though he was not pacing or punchy. _It's Duo, it must be Duo affecting him this way_. Heero went directly to the window and looked out it with sharp eyes, a posture a little more loose than usual. It was impossible to guess whether or not he paid any attention the stained glass below the true window. Trowa studied the boy, _Not just Duo... it's all setting in. The reality that war is over. That the Peacecrafts and their kind are spinning their silk of peace around the world. _He did not speak to Heero, just shut the door, which was always oiled at the hinges, thus silent, and went directly to the tiny kitchen and put the kettle on. While it was heating up, he turned and leaned in the door frame, though there was no door, with his arms at his sides and his head slightly bowed, though he was watching Heero.

They stood across the room from one another in silence. These two, who had been accustomed to solitude, to the loneliness of having lived without any true companionship before the war, were _not_ at a loss for words. What needed expression between the two of them? They had endured a nightmare of war where mortal danger was a forgone conclusion. This, they could manage, they were accustomed to it, could _live_ with it. Such circumstances egged one on toward their purpose. They had no fear of death and death seemed to have no lingering taste for either of them. What they had found in peacetime was a far more personal, far more unfamiliar human battlefield--where emotions and relationships and words were at the forefront. This was life, humanity, something that both of them were initiated into during the war, and were still struggling their way through. Each one had, in his own way yielded some of the soldier's detachment to this new way of life. The silence between them was heightened with a new awareness because of this, and left a small buzzing charge in the air. Both vaguely recalled a time when Heero had proclaimed the importance of following one's emotions. After some long minutes of silent stillness, the kettle began its whistle and Trowa moved back into the kitchen. There he quietly prepared the tea.


	3. Imperfect Soldier

Trowa returned with two cups of black tea, sweetened to his taste. He brought his chair up to the table and sat in it. Heero turned and walked up to the table with his feline stalk of a walk, and just looked at the table, the chair the second cup on the table with its thin line of steam rising from the nearly boiling contents. This was all before he sat across from the other boy. Trowa had begun to lightly sip his tea, taking it in small, semi-sips, intervals small enough to cool between the cup and his tongue. He turned his gaze pointedly to the fingers of the Japanese boy as he wrapped his hand around the mug, rather than using the handle. He began to ponder the difficulty the other was having with something so mundane as drinking tea. _Pain, he understands physical pain. The experience of it from realization to those distended moments when the pain has reached its apogee and then the gradual acquiescence of it from his flesh. I wonder if-- _he sat forward then, and pulled his sweater over his head. It left him in his jeans and a black sleeveless undershirt, the sweater rested on the back of his chair, folded in half. --_He needs a release valve to loose the emotions he is otherwise incapable of expressing. _ His eyes had continued looking at the fingers from the moment Heero grasped the cup.

"The cup is hot," Trowa demurred, with a soft voice. He finally spoke to remind Heero of the pain, so that he might adjust his drinking method accordingly. Though he still did not drink; he simply looked at the porcelain emptily, if not a touch hostilely.

"Hn," came the response. Trowa continued thinking: _Perhaps he is letting the pain burn his distractions away, something else to focus on. Does that mean he is leaving?_

They sat awhile opposite each other their eyes both looking at Heero's hand and the mug he held. Eternities later at the same moment, they stripped their gazes from Heero holding the cup and aimed them at one another. Strangely though, there was no appraisal, no depth seeking, Just dark blue and green salient gazes.

It happened as if they did not think of it, and as if it were choreographed. Heero was straddling Trowa, one hot hand and one the same warm temperature of the room on each of the other boy's shoulders. Trowa easily pulled Heero up into a standing position with hands on narrow hips. He slid from the chair onto his knees, and rid Heero of his shorts. The strong little hands never left his shoulders. Heero's cock met with a mouth warmer than the hand which had an external surface with which to lose heat. Trowa's mouth was imbued with the same effortless skill the boy showed in everything he did. He mixed sucking with licking, hard with soft, with a combination of tongue movements and hands which grasped and alternately stroked Heero's thighs, his ass, his belly.

Heero, before any climax was met, took his kneading hands away from Trowa's shoulders, and pulled the other boy up by bracing his hands on the outsides of his biceps. With lightning speed they undressed and made their way to the bed. Rather, Heero pushed Trowa over the bed, and thrust his still warm and wet cock into Trowa. This he did over, and over, which of itself would have been gratifying to the taller boy, but Heero also knew, from an unfailing understanding of anatomy, various places where high concentrations of nerves were bundled, and thus where to touch, where to stroke with his hands to coax a small noise of pleasure out of Trowa before they simultaneously reached release. It was the only vociferous noise since Heero's response about the cup.

They stayed in this spent position for a few heartbeats. Trowa crawled onto the bed from there, reaching behind him to take hold of Heero's hands and pulled the smaller boy onto the bed with him. It creaked, for the first time that night, when it embraced their combined weight. Trowa wrapped himself around Heero, feeling… protective… Heero was trembling. _It has all crystallized now. _Trowa looked at Heero's eyes which were far away, not something he could recall ever having seen in the other's expression before. _He is leaving. _Hours later, after just laying there, holding and being held, respectively, their breaths rising and falling in perfect time yet creating no real bond, they fell to sleep.

When grey dawn waxed red and shone her light through the single window across the bed, neither boy had moved much. The sky was not through shedding night when Trowa became aware of Heero's rising and getting dressed, but he said nothing, nor moved. The door shut behind the perfect soldier, made imperfect by the lack of war.


End file.
